


Xander's Ugly Man

by orphan_account



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Caring Giles, Gen, Giles POV, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Nightmares, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 16:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16432799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: As Giles records the events of "Nightmares" in his Watcher's diary, he notices something worrisome.





	Xander's Ugly Man

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story in 2012 and came across it recently in my old Buffy fanfic folder. I think it holds up, but I'll leave that to you to decide!
> 
> Also, please heed the tags, child abuse is a major theme in this story.

Giles rubbed his face, sighed, and took another sip of coffee. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to be tense, tonight, but he did want to be awake, and the first two cups of tea had proved rather less than sufficient. It had been a long day and was shaping up to be an even longer night.

Recording events in the Watcher’s Diaries was hardly the most glamorous aspect of his work, and far from the most exciting, but as long as there were Slayers and Watchers it would remain a dull necessity. The threats faced by the Slayer had to be chronicled for future. If his labor tonight could save even one life a century from now it would certainly be worth it. Lord knew he had relied on his own share of old texts since Buffy had come to Sunnydale.

Still, as the little hand on the library clock edged past the one, he couldn’t help but wish that being a Watcher meant a tad less writing and a lot more sleeping. He had already described the events of the day in as much detail as he could recall, his own and Buffy’s reactions to the nightmares, and several theories pertaining to the role of the hellmouth in the incarnation of dreams and fears. He had only just begun really consider the ugly man.

It had differed from the other apparitions. Nearly every other nightmare Giles had witnessed had taken the form of a frightful situation, incorporating a specific fear or anxiety—his illiteracy, getting lost in the stacks, Buffy’s death, the freedom of the Master, Willow’s performance, Xander’s nudity, the Wendell boy’s spiders, even Cordelia’s hair. But Billy’s monster had been something else, a monstrous exaggeration of a normal man. Then he frowned, and penned in a caveat. Xander had conjured a clown, but it had been vicious and knife-wielding, an exaggeration of the normal birthday clown the boy had feared…barring some horrible American birthday tradition he wasn’t aware of.

Well, he supposed, this was why it paid to be thorough. He kept writing. The ugly man had also differed in that it had attacked not only Billy, but everyone in its path. This he added with confidence, for even the Master had used his freedom to harm only Buffy. The only exception had been… Xander’s clown, which had chased Xander and him and Willow down the hallway with knife in hand. A pit was forming in his stomach, but he took another sip of tepid coffee and forced himself to ignore it. A few similarities meant nothing. He kept writing. The ugly man had disappeared when Billy had faced it, both literally and figuratively, and torn off its mask.

He pulled his glasses off and set them on the table, closing his eyes. Xander’s clown had fallen back, too, but only when the young man had turned, declared himself unafraid, and knocked it to the ground. _What are they doing?_ Willow had asked, as Billy had strode bravely toward the ugly man. Xander, for once, had not required an explanation. _I get it_ , he’d said.

Giles closed the heavy diary with a thump, and massaged his forehead. Monday. He could sort this out on Monday.

xxxxxx

He pulled Xander aside in the library the next Monday morning. The boy seemed surprised as he took in Giles’ haggard appearance, the circles under his eyes and the undoubtedly grim set to his mouth.

“What’s going on?” Xander asked, watching the library doors swing shut behind Buffy and Willow as they headed off to first period.

“About what happened on Friday,” Giles said, all eloquent preamble failing him. “I’d hoped to ask you a question.”

Xander sighed. “Yes, I was attracted to Buffy the vampire wonder. And yes, I am a sick, sick man. This we have  established.”

“That wasn’t…” Giles began, but of course Xander knew that hadn’t been his question. The boy was grinning a little at his confusion and Giles supposed it had to be some joke the children hadn’t bothered to let him in on. But it hardly mattered. “Your nightmare,” he said bluntly. “Did…did something happen to you? On your sixth birthday.”

The smile flickered, but remained in place. “I thought Willow said. I got chased by a birthday clown. Cue one decade of embarrassment and clown fear.”

“But you weren’t…” Giles sighed, the knot in his stomach loosening. Perhaps it was coincidence after all. “No one hurt you? Not the, the clown, or anyone else?” Embarrassment and clown fear. It made sense, didn’t it, and there was nothing to suggest that his suspicions had been born of anything more than a stressful day and too much coffee.

Xander dipped his head, and it took Giles a moment to realize that his smile had faded. “Did Willow say something?” he asked carefully. “Was it the kiddie league comment? Because I swear, I only meant that thing about parents generally, nothing ever—”

Giles hadn’t heard the kiddie league comment, but his stomach flipped at _parents_. “It was neither,” he said, and tried to confirm what he still hoped was not true. “But…something did happen.”

Xander met his eyes, smiled an uncomfortable smile at him for a moment, then seemed to think better of it. It faded from his face as he took a step toward the door, his tone cautious. “I have to get to class,” he said, then seemed to force levity into his voice. “Workin’ hard on that D-minus in math, you know.”

“Please,” Giles said. “Just tell me what happened.”

The indecision that tugged on the boy’s features was plain, and Giles could feel his own face softening in sympathy. Xander shook his head, almost imperceptibly, before tightening his jaw and answering. “Nothing. I mean, nothing serious. Definitely not Billy serious. Can I go?” He had the wide-eyed look of a trapped animal.

It made Giles feel like a monster when he said in as commanding a voice as he could muster, “No. Tell me, Xander.”

Xander’s eyes slid to the linoleum of the library floor, which he studied with interest for several seconds before answering in a tone that was barely above a mumble. “My dad hired the clown for my birthday. I got scared after minute five, clown guy called it off, everyone went home.” He paused, and Giles waited with bated breath as Xander’s usually gratingly-loud voice grew even softer. “Of course, my dad was already drunk out of his mind and I guess when the guy charged him full price he kind of lost it. Punched him in the face, then chased me around the house yelling about how much I cost him and wasn’t worth it and didn’t appreciate, you know, stuff.” Xander shrugged, and Giles felt the anger rising within him like it was a living thing. A six-year-old child… Xander went on. “He caught me, smacked me around, I truly learned to hate clowns. That’s it.”

“This sort of thing,” Giles said, needing to know. “Did it happen often? Does it?”

Xander bit his lip, and fidgeted with a string on the hem of his sleeve, neither answering Giles nor meeting his eyes for a few seconds too long. “Kinda stayed away from clowns after that."

Giles stared at him, as if he could see past the dismissive words that way. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to find Xander’s parents and give them exactly what they deserved, and he knew he didn’t quite manage to mask the feeling in his clipped tone when he said, “You know what I mean.”

Xander shrugged, not bothering to deny it. Something in his posture, the lack of life in his face and eyes, seemed utterly defeated, and Giles wondered the last time he’d admitted so much to anyone.  He’d implied that Willow knew something, but Giles was certain that if Buffy’d known anything she wouldn’t have kept it from him, intentionally or not.

“Uh, no, then,” Xander said, snapping off the dangling string and seeming not sure what to do for a second before sticking it in his pocket. He sounded almost like normal, his voice loud and breezy. “Nope. Not ever. Crazy one time clown thing.”

Giles didn’t know whether to believe him. Or whether he simply wanted to.

Then a moment’s inspiration hit and he raised a finger, stepping back to open his desk drawer and pull out a small, shiny metal key. “This,” he said, stepping forward and pressing it into Xander’s hand, and trying to ignore how the boy tensed as he moved forward, “is the spare key to my house. If you ever…for any reason…feeling like stopping by,” he paused to make the weight of the offer clear, “you’ll be welcome.”

Xander stared at the key a moment, like it was a foreign object, then pocketed it and plastered on another smile. “Sure thing, G-man,” he said, then glanced conspicuously at the clock. “Now, uh…can I go, you know, math?”

“Yes, go math,” Giles said, offering him a small smile. It faded as soon as Xander left the library, door swinging shut behind him. He wondered if he shouldn’t’ve done more, or if perhaps he’d read too much into the boy’s uncomfortable silences.

That night he sat up, nursing a scotch and irrationally tense, until he’d fallen asleep on his couch, but Xander never came. The next night, he made it to bed, but still, no Xander. Days turned to weeks, then months, and an apocalypse or three down the line, he put it out of his mind. The boy seemed fine, and thanks to the Hellmouth, life in Sunnydale was never dull. An offhand comment or two, stretched years apart, made him wonder occasionally that he’d made the right decision in letting it drop. But as the boy’s age had caught up to his breezy self-reliance, as he’d become good-hearted if silly young man, gotten a job and an apartment and an ex-demon of his own, Giles supposed everything had worked itself out all right.

He didn’t realize he’d been wrong until years later, and far from Sunnydale, and had received a teary message from Willow had explained why Xander had broken off his engagement to Anya—and what he’d feared. Though by then, the nightmares that had plagued the school were nothing but a distant memory, he realized with a sick certainty, Xander’s ugly man had reared its head one more time.


End file.
